After Pentecost

195:1.1The Hel­l­eniza­tion of Chris­tian­ity started in earnest on that event­ful day when the Apos­tle Paul stood be­fore the coun­cil of the Are­opa­gus in Athens and told the Athe­ni­ans about “the Un­known God.” There, un­der the shadow of the Acrop­o­lis, this Ro­man cit­i­zen pro­claimed to these Greeks his ver­sion of the new re­li­gion which had taken ori­gin in the Jew­ish land of Gal­i­lee. And there was some­thing strangely alike in Greek phi­los­o­phy and many of the teach­ings of Je­sus. They had a com­mon goal—both aimed at the emer­gence of the in­di­vid­ual. The Greek, at so­cial and po­lit­i­cal emer­gence; Je­sus, at moral and spir­i­tual emer­gence. The Greek taught in­tel­lec­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal free­dom; Je­sus taught spir­i­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to re­li­gious lib­erty. These two ideas put to­gether con­sti­tuted a new and mighty char­ter for hu­man free­dom; they pre­saged man’s so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and spir­i­tual lib­erty.

195:1.2Chris­tian­ity came into ex­is­tence and tri­umphed over all con­tend­ing re­li­gions pri­mar­ily be­cause of two things:

195:1.31. The Greek mind was will­ing to bor­row new and good ideas even from the Jews.

195:1.42. Paul and his suc­ces­sors were will­ing but shrewd and saga­cious com­pro­mis­ers; they were keen the­o­logic traders.

195:1.5At the time Paul stood up in Athens preach­ing “Christ and Him Cru­ci­fied,” the Greeks were spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry; they were in­quir­ing, in­ter­ested, and ac­tu­ally look­ing for spir­i­tual truth. Never for­get that at first the Ro­mans fought Chris­tian­ity, while the Greeks em­braced it, and that it was the Greeks who lit­er­ally forced the Ro­mans sub­se­quently to ac­cept this new re­li­gion, as then mod­i­fied, as a part of Greek cul­ture.

195:1.6The Greek revered beauty, the Jew ho­li­ness, but both peo­ples loved truth. For cen­turies the Greek had se­ri­ously thought and earnestly de­bated about all hu­man prob­lems—so­cial, eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, and philo­sophic—ex­cept re­li­gion. Few Greeks had paid much at­ten­tion to re­li­gion; they did not take even their own re­li­gion very se­ri­ously. For cen­turies the Jews had ne­glected these other fields of thought while they de­voted their minds to re­li­gion. They took their re­li­gion very se­ri­ously, too se­ri­ously. As il­lu­mi­nated by the con­tent of Je­sus’ mes­sage, the united prod­uct of the cen­turies of the thought of these two peo­ples now be­came the driv­ing power of a new or­der of hu­man so­ci­ety and, to a cer­tain ex­tent, of a new or­der of hu­man re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice.

195:1.7The in­flu­ence of Greek cul­ture had al­ready pen­e­trated the lands of the west­ern Med­i­ter­ra­nean when Alexan­der spread Hel­lenis­tic civ­i­liza­tion over the near-East­ern world. The Greeks did very well with their re­li­gion and their pol­i­tics as long as they lived in small city-states, but when the Mace­do­nian king dared to ex­pand Greece into an em­pire, stretch­ing from the Adri­atic to the In­dus, trou­ble be­gan. The art and phi­los­o­phy of Greece were fully equal to the task of im­pe­rial ex­pan­sion, but not so with Greek po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion or re­li­gion. Af­ter the city-states of Greece had ex­panded into em­pire, their rather parochial gods seemed a lit­tle queer. The Greeks were re­ally search­ing for one God, a greater and bet­ter God, when the Chris­tian­ized ver­sion of the older Jew­ish re­li­gion came to them.

195:1.8The Hel­lenis­tic Em­pire, as such, could not en­dure. Its cul­tural sway con­tin­ued on, but it en­dured only af­ter se­cur­ing from the West the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal ge­nius for em­pire ad­min­is­tra­tion and af­ter ob­tain­ing from the East a re­li­gion whose one God pos­sessed em­pire dig­nity.

195:1.9In the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, Hel­lenis­tic cul­ture had al­ready at­tained its high­est lev­els; its ret­ro­gres­sion had be­gun; learn­ing was ad­vanc­ing but ge­nius was de­clin­ing. It was at this very time that the ideas and ide­als of Je­sus, which were par­tially em­bod­ied in Chris­tian­ity, be­came a part of the sal­vage of Greek cul­ture and learn­ing.

195:1.10Alexan­der had charged on the East with the cul­tural gift of the civ­i­liza­tion of Greece; Paul as­saulted the West with the Chris­tian ver­sion of the gospel of Je­sus. And wher­ever the Greek cul­ture pre­vailed through­out the West, there Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity took root.

195:1.11The East­ern ver­sion of the mes­sage of Je­sus, not­with­stand­ing that it re­mained more true to his teach­ings, con­tin­ued to fol­low the un­com­pro­mis­ing at­ti­tude of Ab­ner. It never pro­gressed as did the Hel­le­nized ver­sion and was even­tu­ally lost in the Is­lamic move­ment.